The change we need || Acharya Prashant, Train conversation (2022)

Questioner (Q): In one of your videos, you mentioned that we don’t need to awaken fifty percent or more of the population to institutionalize change, we just need a small percentage. I don’t really understand this logic. Could you elaborate?

Acharya Prashant (AP): See, the majority is anyway never very capable of or very willing to take life in its own hands. That’s the way things are. We are not alleging or trying to be judgmental in that sense; that’s just the way things are and always have been. The bulk of the people want to have somebody to look up to. It’s these leaders that we need—rather we need to create—and then the people, the bulk of people, they will come along.

So, that’s what. When it comes to change, it’s really these two percent who matter. Though when change gets executed, it appears as if eighty or ninety percent of the population has participated in the change, right? But the fact is, it’s only the two percent active ones. For example, you may talk of, in the Indian context, the revolt of 1857, and you speak of it as if entire India rose in rebellion. No, it was just a handful of people. Similarly, if you look at the Russian or the French revolutions, we talk of them as if the entire country of Russia and France were up in arms. Was that really the case? We talk of the non-cooperation movement of Mahatma Gandhi. How many people were really with him? The vast majority is usually indifferent. That’s the way they are.

So, I am not saying one person can do it all, but you also do not require one crore people. The number is not one, but it’s closer to one than one crore. That’s the kind of numbers we need. And the most difficult part of operation is getting the first ten people. Ten to ten thousand is easier, ten thousand to ten lakh is even easier, and ten lakh to ten crore is a jiffy. So, it’s the initial part, the formative part that you are still struggling with. Actually, we need not look at these one percent or two percent people as individuals. You could say it is that part of the overall structure of society that moves the society. Just as when you are running, all parts of your body are at a certain speed, but it’s only the legs that are moving, but you don’t say that the legs are running, you say the man is running, similarly it’s these one or two percent that would be the legs that would carry the society along.